The sharing and collective processing of information by individuals in any social system is an attempt to reduce the uncertainty associated with key features of their environments by collecting and storing information. By sampling each of its options regularly, an individual gains from being able to exploit them when they are productive and avoid them otherwise. In this way, collection of information can be thought of as a solution to the uncertainty problem that maximises potential opportunities. However, doing so may entail certain costs with respect to attributes such as time, energy and attention. We explore the cost/benefits of cooperation within the domain of distributed systems, where biologically inspired agents interact with each other using the environment to disseminate information about resources/services.

Many of the benefits sought by living things are disproportionally available to cooperating populations. The problem lies with the fact that while an individual can benefit from mutual cooperation, each can also do so even better by exploiting the cooperative efforts of others. Over a period of time, the same individuals may interact again, allowing for more complex patterns of strategic interactions. It is understood that exploitative strategies are unlikely to persist in the long run, because they generate selection for a change in receiver responses. However, it is argued, that the evolution of exploitation may prove a recurrent, though, transient phenomenon.

The work has proceeded through examination of the game‐theoretic underpinnings of well known distributed applications and biological systems, through the creation of a simulation environment, in which the similarities between existing gossiping protocols and the foraging behaviour of ants, bees and similar creatures is modelled to investigate the dynamics of social foraging in distributed environments.